


Trouble and Justice

by DustySoul



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Body Swap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4123804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustySoul/pseuds/DustySoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brett wakes up in an ally, hurting like hell, and blind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let's all agree that I just suck a titles.
> 
> For this prompt on the kinkmeme  
> http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1742.html?thread=3880654#cmt3880654

Cool air brushes across the lower part of his face. His lips are sticky and stiff with a mixture of dry and fresh blood. And _fuck_. **_Fuck_**.

Everything hurts like hell. He didn’t know it was even possible to hurt this much.

He drifts, detached from his body and the pain and thinks: _What on earth happened last night?_ He recalls going out for drinks with a rag tag group of cops trying to be friends. It was a mixture of the old staff, weary at having been betrayed by their friends and partners, and a new crop, fresh to the badge or the district, brought in to replace everyone that had been carted off to rot a for good long while behind bars. 

The first round had been awkward as hell, with no one really knowing what to say. More than half of the best tall tale tellers were gone and their absence hung solemnly in the air of the bright and boisterous, overcrowded bar. Until, of course, they got to laughing about the vigilante / superhero who keeps sending mice scurrying to Brett to turn themselves in.

He doesn’t find it particularly funny. In part, because he and his partner are the ones who have to listen to these violent and brutal criminals, rapist, traffickers, drug runners, and hit men in hysterics over The Devil of Hells Kitchen. And, also because it was just really fucking weird. Like some sort of psycho stalking courtship.

None of that explains how he ended up here, feeling as if he went through a meat tenderizer, with something in his mouth still oozing blood. He didn’t get drunk. He didn’t pick a fight. And if someone had jumped him anyone of the men he’d been drinking with would have stepped in. That’s about the only good thing about having this vigilante’s trust, he has an iron clad reputation for being a good cop. The rest… well no one can be sure if those files leaked from Landman and Zack in included everyone loyal to Fisk.

After a time he comes back to himself and takes inventory. His chest hurts. Several of his ribs are probably broken and _that’s_ a knife wound. Every inch of his skin that isn’t bleeding feels like it’s bruised. He opens his eyes to get a feeling about his surroundings… _nothing_. 

Fear grips him then and he struggles to keep his breathing even. He doesn’t want to jostle those ribs. This isn’t city night dark. Or inside some warehouse dark. This is total, absolute, and complete darkness. He could still be in a closet or some window less basement but…

The scent of garbage, cigarette smoke, and wet asphalt tells him that he is outside. Probably lying in an ally. He struggles up. There’s nothing much to do but stumble to a busy street and hope someone sees him and  calls an ambulance.

“Hey! Hey!” A woman’s voice calls to him. He can hear her running down the alley. He can _smell_ her, from here.

“Help.” He says, it comes out a croaked whisper. He falls a moment later, a wave of pain unbalancing him.

“Get up. Get up.” She commands, tone urgent.

He struggles, with her hands in his armpits, to get back to his feet. 

“Come on, come on.” She leads him away.

He’s to exhausted to speak, to ask her who she is or where they’re going or if she’s called an ambulance.

 

When he comes to for the second time he’s lying on a sofa. 

“You awake?” The woman asks.

“I can’t see.” He says.

“… Were you expecting to?”

He swallows, again, pushing back panic.

“Who are you?”

He can hear her shift. Her hands light, gently, upon his face. “I didn’t find any head injuries…” Her fingers pass along his face, scalp, and neck. “… You could have been drugged.” She says, when she’s finished her exam.

“Who are you?” He asks, more instantly.

“I’m Claire. At least this time you weren’t in my dumpster.”

“I don’t know anyone named Claire.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to get that, what’s your name?”

“Brett.”

“…Okay, Brett, why don’t you tell me your home or cell number?”

“What time is it?” He asks, worrying that he might wake his mother.

He can hear Claire’s clothes shift as she looks at a clock. “It’s 3:25 a.m. You should thank Santino by the way. This is the second time he’s saved your life.”

“I thought you saved my life.”

“I can’t save your life if I don’t know where you’re bleeding out. Anyway, that cell number.”

He tells her.

She pulls out her own phone and dials. Which seems absurd until his phone doesn’t ring in response. He can hear both sides of the conversation when the ring tone stops playing.”

“Hello, it’s Claire.”

“Claire!? How’d…”

“My educated guess is that I’m talking to a Matt who is in Brett’s body.”

“I- yes.”

“You should come over to my apartment. I found your better half.”

“I… actually don’t think I can manage that. I’m not used to um…”

Claire snorts, “I’m sorry, that makes sense.”

It’s strange to hear his voice on the other end of the line. “What makes you say he’s _my_ better half?”

“Just the feeling that you didn’t wake up with a couple broken ribs, a stab wound, and an incredible amount of bruising, where ever you are. Now, I’m going to call Foggy and tell him to pick you up. Do you think we should meet in my apartment, or should I drive over to yours?”

“Mine, I think, just to be safe.”

“Okay. Bye, Matt.”

“Bye, Claire.”

She hangs up, then dials another number. While the phone rings she asks, “What’s your address?”

He tells her.

“Who is this?”

“Claire, you know, Matt’s Hottie McBurnner Phone.”

“Oh. What’s wrong, is he okay?”

“There’s um… been a really, really big mix up. I need you to go to Brett’s place and pick him up.”

“Sure, I know there that is. But why’s Matt at Brett’s.”

“Because he’s in Brett’s body.”

“Waoh, TMI. TMI, I do not need to know who my law partner is boning.”

Claire laughs. And it sunk in for Brett that they’re talking about Matt Murdock. And it only takes a second of suspicious wondering to figure out why this isn’t the second time Matt would wake up in an alley with broken ribs and bruised to hell. Fucking hell. Matt’s The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Not like that.” Claire says, “I mean Matt and Brett have somehow switched bodies.”

“This sounds like Avengers business.”

Claire hums her agreement. “If we can’t fix it on our own we can ask them.” She wonders what it must be like to be known for defeating invading alien armies and dealing with simply bizarre magical phenomenal like switching bodies, sex pollen, and sudden on sets of telepathy.

Claire is scarily efficient. She has her car loaded with all the supplies she needs and him carefully packed into the passenger seat within ten minutes of ending the phone call with Foggy.

“Okay, but how does he do the crime fighting thing?”

“Matt?”

“Yeah. He’s Daredevil, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, just wanted to be sure. So how does he do it?”

“I’m sure he’ll explain it to you better than I could.”

 

Claire picks Matt’s lock.

“You shouldn’t do that in front of an officer of the law.” He tells her as he listens to the tumblers. It’s amazing he can hear that. He can hear her heart beat too.

“No offense, but you’re not going to be making any arrests until we’ve got this whole body thing sorted out.” She guilds him through the door.

“Matt Murdock.” He says, weighted with emotion he can’t identify. Which brings him back to “How the hell?”.

“Yep.” Claire agrees. She helps him down on the sofa.

“So what’s the game plan?” He asks through a pained grunt.

“You’re going to walk Matt through the process of calling in sick, he’s going to go over what he remembers before this became all Freaky Friday, and then we’re going to see if we can fix it.”

“Good plan.” He closes his eyes and drifts.


	2. Chapter 2

He hears Matt and Foggy stumble their way into Matt’s apartment. Foggy says, “Seriously, you need to stop staring. It’s creepy.” While he fumbles for the light switch. Matt takes care of it and they turn on with a buzz of sound.

The buzz doesn’t go away.

That’s going to get really annoying.

“Alright.” Claire says, “Are either of you hurt?”

Their is a chorus of, “No.”

“Okay, then first things first, Matt, please apologize to Brett.”

“He really doesn’t need to do that.”

“Oh, yes, he does. Not only for the broken ribs but also for getting you both into this mess.”

“How do you know this was something _I_ did?”

“I know it’s not something Brett did. Or his many, many, dangerous enemies form his extra curricular activities.”

Matt comes over to the the sofa and clears his throat. Instead of an apology, he whistles, low and soft like he didn’t quite mean to.

“What.”

“Nothing. Um, I’m sorry, Brett, for um… the injuries. And for some how dragging _you_ into this with me.”

“Okay, but what was with the-” Foggy imitates the whistle. “Matt, you’re blushing.”

“I just never knew what I looked like before.”

“I told you you were good looking.” Foggy whoops with laughter.

“Okay.” Claire cuts in, “Matt, do you know what could have caused you and Brett to change bodies? What were you up to last night?”

“Should I um- really, in front of him?”

“I want to know what dumb ass shit got me into this situation.” Brett states, trying to glare in the general direction Matt was last standing. He has no idea how effectual it is. “Also, being you kind of sucks. I’m really lucky your nurse friend has good pain killers.”

Matt makes a noise.

“They’ll probably wear off by the time you switch back.” Foggy assures.

And Brett doesn’t want to think about that. At all. Nope, not even a little bit. 

(Matt Murdock is a fucking masochist as well as a vigilante superhero working completely outside the law. Shit can not get any weirder. And he can unpack this all once a.) His chest doesn’t feel like an elephants sitting on it, b.) The whole entire world is so fucking… _intense_ (He was right about the sound of the lights getting really, really annoying and is very grateful that Claire didn’t need them to navigate this space.) and c.) He can see again.)

“Alright.” Matt says, “Let’s see, last night was um… tracking down this new Russian group and incentivizing them to stay away from Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Any of them have any weird alien tec or magic or something?”

“No. Not that I’m aware of at least. And even if they did how would we track them down with out revealing you know…”

Brett does not know.

Thankfully Foggy fills in, “The fact that you’re daredevil and we’re your very squishy, very torturable weak spots.”

“…Yeah.”

Claire lets out a deep sigh. “Then lets… Brett, show Matt how to call in sick for you. Let’s start with that for now.”

 

After that Brett and Matt go on and have a little, very frustrating, and mostly unhelpful Q&A.

“So how do I deal with everything being so fucking loud?”

“Um… You can… just focus? Block out the unnecessary information?”

“So how do I do that?”

“You just um… do.”

Brett makes a frustrated sound. Not too loud because **ow** ribs.

“Hey, I was trained for _years_ to learn how to cope with the heightened senses.”

“This isn’t a normal blind person thing, is it?”

Matt laughs and laughs and laughs before wheezing, “No, no, it’s not.”

"You're a shitty teacher, Murdock, has anyone ever told you that?"


	3. Chapter 3

Foggy and Claire argue about work arrangements.

“I have a law firm to run. Can’t you just cut back your hours?”

“Not so drastically and on such short notice! Can’t your secretary, what was her name, Karen take over for a bit? Just to make the shift from accepting walk-ins to scheduling them for a time when Murdock is Murdock again?”

“And when will that be, exactly? What if you switched to the weekend shift? You look for whatever it is we’re looking for during the week and then I’ll look during the weekend.”

Brett can hear Claire gritting her teeth, can her the soft rush of air right before she agrees.

They work out the logistics as Matt protests that he wants to help.

“Do you even think you can walk on your own? Just… sit on the sofa, take my lap top, and watch Youtube or something.”

Claire says to Brett, “Come on, you’re going to want some place quiet to be.” She sets him up in Matt’s bed (which is really weird, and another thing he can think about later.) with the next dose of painkillers, ear, and nose plugs.

“Can you hear me?” She asks. 

And he can. It’s a little more muffled than is regular hearing. It’s manageable. He nods.

“Good. Get some sleep. I’ll tell Matt not to bug you and Foggy and I… we’ll figure it out.”

 

They don’t figure it out. Brett’s world fell apart on a Wednesday night, Thursday morning. Matt and Brett are stuck as Brett and Matt clear through till Sunday. Matt alternates between being a helpful host (making him amazing meals even though, “I’m not used to cooking by sight. Or with out the super senses. Sorry... if it’s a little burnt.”) And being annoying, (“You know, I don’t remember what it’s like to just not be in control of the senses…”, “How are you holding up?”, “Do you want to try some sparing practice?” Brett responded the the last one with a grunt and a grim reminder that _he_ still had broken ribs.).

“How the hell do you do it, Murdock?”

“Catholicism. And, like I said, I was trained.”

“Trained to do what, exactly?”

“Be a soldier. Well, maybe more like a ninja.”

Brett holds this against the time line of Matt Murdock’s life. Matt was not being trained when he was in college, that’s something Foggy would have picked up on. And besides, Foggy didn’t mention that Matt had SPD or anything, so it would have had to have been before but… “When?”

“When I was ten.”

“By whom?” Brett asks, head spinning. And not from the stimuli this time.

“This guy named Stick. He was also blind. He works for some… I don’t know, it’s not a gang or a mob, but he works for this really shady, powerful, international group. He was training me to work for them as well.”

“What happened?” He’s trying to picture all this, a little blind kid, living in an orphanage, overwhelmed by his own senses, being taught kung fu by some blind ninja working for… that’s a thought to finish when his head doesn’t hurt.

Matt’s silent for a long, long time. “I became too attached.” The monotone reveals the emotion, held in check, just under the surface. Matt takes in a deep, sharp breath. “He abandoned me.”

And Brett doesn’t know what to say. “So how’d this training go, exactly?” He says, trying to change the subject.

“When he was being paid by the nuns it was just walking around parks while he taught me how to interrupt my senses to understand my surroundings. He spent a long time trying to help me feel all that noise as music. To understand what each little message from my sense means and to create a… picture with all the input.”

“Poetic.”

“About a year later I’d learned what he could officially teach me. Then he sort of, disappeared. I met with him in secret and he taught me how to fight.”

And now Brett wishes he hadn’t asked. Matt speaks about it like he would speak about what he learned in school that year, or about the games he’d play at recess. And he can’t think about what 'learning how to fight' might entail, especially considering Matt’s reactions to Brett having taken painkillers in his body, and all the old injuries Claire checked on while he was lying on her sofa.

 

“I think it’s time we go to the Avengers.” Claire says when she stumbles into Matt’s apartment between Sunday night and Monday morning. “Foggy and I have had no luck tracking down anything even remotely absurd enough to cause something like this.”

She places a call to the tower's computer system (there's a lot of controversy over whether it was a sentient AI or just a regularly, though admittedly Tony Stark level of extra ordinary, computer system)  to make an appointment with the support staff.

 

In the morning Foggy drives them to midtown, with Claire in the passenger seat and Brett and Matt on the back bench.

“You look like a dog Matt, relax.”

“It’s amazing, Foggy!”

Foggy just sighs.

 

There is no wait once they get to the tower and the actual exam takes less than five minutes.

One of the Avengers, Wanda, comes in. She places one hand on Matt’s head and the other on Brett’s. And an instant later instead of being Matt as Brett and Brett as Matt the world is set to rights and Matt is Matt and Brett is Brett.

They both sigh. It feels _fantastic_ to be able to breathe without any pain.

The woman apologizes, “I’m so sorry. Lots of people got hit by this when we went up against that wizard last week. Thor and Bruce put together a cure so most people wouldn’t even notice they’re bodies had been switched in the middle of the night. I have no idea how it missed you two.” 

To Matt she says, face creased in concern, “Do you need a doctor to look at those ribs? You seem to be in a lot of pain.”

“I can handle it.” Matt deflects, smiling serenely. “Thank you so much for helping us.”

Wanda’s expression closes and the emotion in the air is… intense. “If your sure.” Wanda says, and walks off.

The tension is gone once the door has closed behind her.

 

They get back into the car. The whole thing took less time than the drive up here.

Brett’s mind spins from the tower to his, thank god, not Matt’s, apartment. He's going to have to take another day, if not another week, off to recover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I can take this further.  
> I could add some post Claire/Brett get together but... eh. Maybe?

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message or follow me on tumblr at dusty-soul.tumblr.com


End file.
